Design of the Ashburton District Council Civic Centre a steel designers’ learnings from a timber building design

Timber is a fantastic product with many advantagesover other building materials, particularly froma sustainability perspective. With the globalsustainability drivers we want to see more uptake ofthe material in major structures in the future. It hasits challenges, mainly due to its novelty and industrylack of experience in using the product.As an industry we have had the opportunity todevelop our design knowledge for steel buildingsfrom learnings from many projects, the ChristchurchEarthquakes and other events. A major contributingfactor to the success of these types of projects hasbeen the development of standard details, products,specifications, design tools and solutions built throughexperience. This shared industry knowledge allowsconsistency in the design, cost and coordinationof these projects where the design team hasunderstanding of the key drivers.In this paper we have summarised some of the keylearnings from the ADC Civic Centre project, froma perspective of an engineer who is familiar withdesigning with the resources available for conventionalsteel buildings. Designing with timber, particularlyin earthquake design which leads to utilisation of16 elements for different load cases, requires a shift inapproach and a questioning of key assumptions.In order to produce commercially viable designs andkeep improving our utilisation of timber products inmajor buildings. It is important to not only develop andtest complex timber technologies and systems but toget the basics right and strengthen our understandingof what works for timber. While designing with timberis a challenge now, with more experience we canmake timber a competitive product for commercialdesigns.